Insights Into Why U.S. Students Lag Behind in Global Academic 'Horse Race'

By Edward B. Fiske

Published: February 11, 1997

WASHINGTON—
American students have rarely fared well in international comparative studies of educational achievement, and a body of common wisdom has developed to explain why.

Students in Japan and other countries, it is said, have a longer school year. American students watch too much television. American teachers do not assign enough homework.

Virtually all of these popular explanations have now been discredited by a massive new comparative study of educational achievement in 41 countries. It showed that American students log just as much time studying mathematics and science in their classrooms, but the nature of the instruction they receive differs greatly from that of other countries.

"Our problem is not merely the amount of time U.S. students or teachers spend on mathematics and science but what they do with the time they have," commented Richard Riley, the U.S. secretary of education.

The new study is the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which was released late last year by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

TIMSS is the most comprehensive and most rigorous educational study ever undertaken. Researchers collected data on the mathematics and science knowledge of half a million students. They also looked at curricula, textbooks and teaching methods in each country in order to look for a correlation between the way countries organize instruction and how much students learn.

As with previous international comparative studies, initial interest focused on the academic "horse race." The study found that eighth grade students in the United States perform at a level that is slightly below average in mathematics and slightly above average in science. The countries whose students outperformed U.S. students in both subjects were Singapore, Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

TIMSS also reported that only five percent of U.S. eighth graders would qualify for inclusion among the world's top 10 percent in mathematics, whereas 45 percent of Singapore's students would fall into this category. In science, however, 13 percent of Americans would qualify for inclusion in the top 10.

Since its release, the report has emerged as what Gordon M. Ambach, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, termed a "wake-up call" for school improvement. "American students are holding their own with the G-7 countries, but the rest of the world is pulling out ahead. We're not keeping up with the countries that are going to be our major competitors in the future."

Business groups concerned about the quality of the future workforce have also seized upon the TIMSS findings as a lever to promote school reform. "The study provides ample evidence that our curricula and expectations for our young people are not demanding enough," said Norman R. Augustine, vice chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation and chairman of the Education Task Force of The Business Roundtable, a corporate group.

Two days after his recent inauguration, President Bill Clinton traveled to Glenbrook North High School outside Chicago to highlight the importance of making American education competitive with that of other countries.

The president chose Glenbrook because it is participating in a project called "First in the World" in which students from 20 school districts took the TIMSS test to see how they measured up to world-class academic standards.

In his State of the Union address last Tuesday, Mr. Clinton referred to his visit and reported that "those students in Illinois tied for first in the world in science, and came in second in math." He listed the raising of academic standards as the first item on the 10-point, $51-billion program that he unveiled in his speech as a way to improve U.S. education.

In interviews, educational and other leaders suggested that the long-run value of the TIMSS study for school reformers lies not in the "horse race" but in the fact that it is the first such report to provide insights into why students in other countries outperform U.S. students.

The study produced data showing that despite the longer Japanese school year U.S. students actually spend more time in science and math classes than Japanese and German students.

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STUDENTS in Germany and Japan watch just as much television as U.S. students, and U.S. teachers assign more homework and spend more class time discussing it than teachers in Japan and Germany.

Analysis of curricular materials and teaching methods showed that American teachers routinely stress breadth rather than depth. "We found that American teachers develop concepts far less frequently," said James Stigler, professor of psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles who coordinated the videotaping of math classes in Germany, Japan and the United States.

The TIMSS data identified several other characteristics of schools in countries such as Singapore and Korea, where students outperform their American counterparts.

High-performing countries have clear standards for student achievement, and these high expectations are reinforced by parents and the community. "We expect less from our children and, to our dismay, they meet out expectations," said Mr. Riley.

The study also found that whereas American teachers often have more academic credentials, teachers in the high-performing countries are better prepared in pedagogical skills and spend more time working with colleagues and honing their lessons.

The TIMSS study was released at a time when a movement to impose higher academic standards in the major disciplines is well under way in the United States. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has published standards that emphasize problem-solving and active learning rather than rote learning of facts and lecture-style teaching.

The international study found that most eighth grade math teachers in the United States are aware of the council's standards and report that they have implemented them in their classes. Videotape and other evidence, however, showed that even many of those teachers who think they are implementing these standards are in fact not doing so.

"Japanese teachers widely practiced what the American standards recommend," said Mr. Riley. As a result, "Japanese students did very well."